Histories English 14 The Last Dodo (v1.0) # Jaqueline Rayner

  The Doctor and Martha go in search of a real live dodo, and are transported by the TARDIS to the mysterious Museum of the Last Ones. There, in the Earth section, they discover every extinct creature up to the present day, all still alive and in suspended animation. Preservation is the museum’s only job – collecting the last one of every endangered species from all over the universe. But exhibits are going missing... Can the Doctor solve the mystery before the museum’s curator adds the last of the Time Lords to her collection?

  

Featuring the Doctor and Martha as played by David Tennant

and Freema Agyeman in the hit series from BBC Television.

  

The Last Dodo

  

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Published in 2007 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd.

  

© Jacqueline Rayner, 2007

Jacqueline Rayner has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in

accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One

Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner

Producer: Phil Collinson

Original series broadcast on BBC Television.

  

Format © BBC 1963.

‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting

Corporation and are used under licence.

  

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  

The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

www.randomhouse.co.uk.

  

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  

ISBN 978 1 84607 2246

The Random House Group Ltd makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in our books

are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed credibly certified

forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.

  

Creative Director: Justin Richards

Project Editor: Steve Tribe

Production Controller: Alenka Oblak

Typeset in Albertina, Deviant Strain and Trade Gothic

  

Cover design by Henry Steadman © BBC 2007

Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH

  For Mum and Dad, and Helen

Contents

  

  1

  5

  15

  25

  35

  45

  55

  65

  75

  85

  97 109

   119

   127

   135

   143

   151

   161

   171

   177

   185

  Mauritius, 1681

  The grunting things had killed her baby. It wasn’t the first time: they’d killed her first baby, too, thirty moons earlier, before it had even been born. Their trampling feet destroyed everything in their paths, and babies all around had succumbed to the same casually cruel fate.

  She couldn’t remember a time before the grunting things had come to her home, but even over her own relatively short life they had be- come greater and greater in number, while her own kind had become fewer and fewer. The grunting things ate their food and had many, many babies of their own, which would grow up to kill more babies and eat more food. Now, in desperation, her kind had left the home that she somehow knew had once been theirs alone, and travelled to a small, sandy spot which was separated from the grunting things by water.

  They thought they were safe. But still, they were all old. There were no more babies. And one day, death visited again. Not the grunting things; this time death was taller, more colourful, more varied in its shrieks and shouts. Death waited till the water was low, as it sometimes was, and came at them from their old home. At first, she stood around watching, not knowing what was happening, not knowing what these new creatures were. Then suddenly the death-bringing animals ran at them and, too late, she realised that she must run too. She ran, they all ran, but more of the tall things appeared behind them. One of the creatures grabbed her mate and he cried out in fear; she hurried towards him, desperate to help but not knowing how. Others came forward to help, too.

  The colourful creatures took them all, all but her. Her escape was sheer luck: the tall things near her grabbed her fellows and none had room left to take her; she was the only one who slipped away.

  Still she lingered, for a second, thinking of the mate with whom she had stayed for so many moons, always hoping that more children would come, eventually. But once more she detected his cry, and knew it was the last she would ever hear of him. All around, the tall things were hitting her fellows with boughs from the dark trees, and the noises they made were like those of her baby as it fell beneath the feet of the grunting things. She was so scared. She ran.

  She ran and ran, past the tall things, past the places that she knew well, till there was nothing but water before her and she could run no longer. Slowing, she took another step or two forward, but retreated quickly as the brine washed her feet. She turned, hoping against hope to see a companion, but there was nothing but sand, stretching out all around, and the occasional pigeon fluttering round the occasional tree. Had her kind been able to fly like that pigeon, perhaps death would not have claimed them. She felt a hollow resentment at what might have been.

  For a few minutes she waited, then she raised her head. Caution battled for a moment with the terrible fear of being alone, and then finally she let out a cry of desperation, a plea for any other of her kind to find her, save her from this fear, this dreadful isolation. But there were no others to hear.

  And then more tall ones arrived: two of them, their bodies the colour of the leaves behind which the pigeon was now perching. She had not seen them approach – perhaps they too had swooped down from the sky.

  She was tired, so tired, and scared, and hopeless, but still she tried to run. It was no good. The leaf-animals were both calm and fast, and seemed to be in front of her whatever way she turned. Suddenly she felt pressure round her waist, and she was raised from the ground. This was it; this was when she went the same way as her babies and her mate – but she didn’t give up, she desperately tried to turn her head, knowing her giant beak, hooked and sharp, was her greatest weapon against these soft, fleshy creatures.

  Had she been less scared, she might have realised the difference between the gentle, soothing noises these creatures made and, the harsh, cruel cries of the death-dealers. But fear had consumed her now.

  One creature said: There’s no need to be scared. The other creature said: We’re not going to hurt you. The first said: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about what’s happened. But at least we can save you.

  He lifted a small, square device that was like nothing she had ever seen before, and held it before her. And the last of the dodos knew nothing else for 400 years.

  ello, Martha here! Question time for you. Tell me, do you have someone who’s your best friend? Someone you thought was great

H

  from the minute you met? Someone you have such fun with? I mean, I’m not saying they have to be perfect. But they’re pretty much ev- erything you want in a friend. You laugh a lot when you’re together

• – good laughter: laughing with, not laughing at. He’s not mean, you see, never mean. And he cares about you, that’s important. (By the way, I’m not saying your friend has to be a he. A she will do. Or, as I’m learning as I travel the universe, an it. But my friend, the one I’m going to be talking about when I get on to specifics in a minute, he’s a he.)

  Where was I? Oh yes, do you have someone, blah de blah de blah etc. Because, as I just revealed (although you’d probably guessed already), I do. I haven’t known him very long, actually, not that that’s important. But this is the real question: have you ever upset your friend, someone you thought was unupsetable (that’s not really a word, but you know what I mean), not in the middle of a row or anything like that (even the best of friends have rows sometimes) but totally out of the blue? Because I just did that. And I wondered what you did to make it up to your friend, especially if you’re not even sure what you did wrong.

  It might help if I told you what happened. Don’t get too excited, it’s not like it’s a huge drama. In fact, it’s a tiny, tiny little thing. Maybe that’s the point. Sometimes it’s the little things that are worse.

  He’s a smiley sort of person, my friend (he’s called the Doctor, by the way – yes, I know that’s not really a name. But you get used to it), and like I say, we laugh a lot. And enthusiastic! He loves everything. He gets excited at all sorts of things, and what’s brilliant is he makes you see how exciting they are, too.

  Oh, I have to tell you something else, or none of the rest of it will make sense. The Doctor and I, we travel together in a ship called the TARDIS. It’s bigger on the inside than the outside, and can go anywhere in time and space. Anywhere. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me, but, well, it’s true and that’s all there is to it.

  ‘Anywhere’ is such an enormous concept, though. Sometimes it can be a bit too much. Try to imagine this: your mum says to you, would you like an apple or a Milky Way? I’d usually say ‘an apple, please’ (no, really, I love apples), but some days I might say, ‘Ooh, a Milky Way, thank you’, because I felt in a bit of a chocolatey mood.

  Now imagine this: your mum says to you: would you like an apple, or an orange, or a pear, or a peach, or a plum, or a pomegranate – and she goes on to name every sort of fruit in the world. And then she says, or a Milky Way or a Bounty – and she goes on to name every sort of chocolate bar in the world. And then she says, or maybe a piece of Cheddar, or Caerphilly, or Stilton, or some toast, or a bowl of porridge, or some blancmange, or some pickled-onion-flavour crisps

• – and she goes on to name every sort of food in the world. (Yes, I know that would take days. But we’re imagining here.) And you have to pick just one and you have to pick it now. Your brain would explode with the choice!

  I don’t know what you’d do, but in an effort to stop the explosion I’d probably grasp at the most familiar, easiest option there was – and say, ‘an apple, please’.

  The Doctor didn’t offer me a choice between every food in the world (actually, for some reason he keeps trying to feed me chips – healthy way to go, Doctor’), what he said to me was, ‘Where would you like to go now? I can take you anywhere! Anywhere at all!’ There he was, poised over the controls, grinning at me, fingers itching to press the switches that would take me to the place I wanted to go.

  I could choose to go anywhere at all. Any house, city, county, coun- try, continent, planet, solar system, or galaxy in the universe. At any time, from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.

  As my brain exploded, I found myself seeking solace in the comfort of childhood, and as if from a distance I heard myself saying the same thing that I always said when I was little and it was the summer hol- idays and Mum asked me ‘Where would you like to go?’ I said, ‘Let’s go to the zoo.’ And the Doctor looked at me as if I’d just kicked his puppy.

  No, really, his face kind of fell. Disappointed, but hard at the same time, like he was angry with me. Then his expression relaxed and he just said, in his normal voice, ‘Nah, gotta be somewhere better than that. I’m offering you anywhere in the universe!’

  So I said, ‘Can I think about it?’ and he nodded but told me not to take too long, because he didn’t want to be wasting time when we could be having fun.

  Now I’m wondering what to do, because I know I upset him, but I don’t know why. Not only have I still got to choose between the Milky Way and the porridge and the crisps and the other billion options (minus apple), but I have to decide whether to talk to him about it or not. I don’t want to upset him again.

  If it’s ever happened to you, what did you do? And really, what on Earth is wrong with going to the zoo?

  Martha walked into the control room, and found the Doctor sitting in a chair, reading some book with a picture of a rocket on the cover. How he could bear science fiction when he knew what it was really like out there she didn’t know – perhaps it amused him, like the way she had begun to find medical dramas hilarious after she started at the hospital. Not that she’d caught the Doctor hanging around reading very often; he wasn’t really the sitting type, manic movement was more his sort of thing – she guessed he was waiting for her to tell him her choice, her golden ticket destination, and the instant she did he’d spring into action, pulling levers and pumping pumps and pressing buttons and darting all over the place like he’d got ants in his pants. Fleas on his knees. Eels at his heels.

  ‘Aha! Martha! Excellent!’ he said. ‘Decided yet?’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said. He blinked, pretend-baffled. ‘You didn’t upset me.’ ‘Yes, I did. But I didn’t mean to. Just tell me, so I don’t do it again, what’s wrong with going to the zoo?’ He frowned at that, seeming to weigh up the options. Finally he simply said, ‘Just not really me.’ ‘Come on, I can tell it’s more than that.’ The Doctor sighed and drew in a deep breath. ‘OK. It. . . hurts. The thought of anything being caged hurts me.’ Martha perched on the edge of his chair. ‘Oh, but there’re plenty of places without cages these days. My these days, I mean, where I come from. They give the animals loads of freedom.’

  ‘Cages don’t always have bars, Martha,’ he said. ‘Just because you call something freedom, doesn’t mean it is.’ He looked at her, a bit pityingly. For a second she felt angry, patronised, and then something in his eyes suddenly made her understand.

  ‘You couldn’t live on only apples and Milky Ways,’ she said, slowly. ‘You might not starve, but it’d still be cruel.’

  The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Hungry? I can offer you a thirty- course banquet in Imperial Japan, a kronkburger on Reblais Beta, de- hydrated protein tablets on a shuttle to Mars – or there’s always chips, nice little chippie in south London. . . ’

  He reached forwards, angling for a feather lying on top of the huge central console, but his fingers only skimmed it. She jumped up to get it for him. It was just a feather, grey and white, nothing to look at twice.

  ‘Seagull?’ she asked. ‘Bookmark,’ he replied, slipping it in place and slamming his book shut with a ringing thud. ‘Oh, right, see what you mean. No, dodo.’ Martha stared at him for a second. Sometimes the ‘anywhere in time and space’ bit took her by surprise in the most unexpected ways. Reblais Beta in the 150th century, fine, animal extinct for three hundred-odd years, her time, unbelievable.

  ‘That’s where I choose!’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘Please? To see a dodo! In its natural habitat,’ she added hurriedly. The Doctor seemed happy enough with her choice. ‘Okey dokey, all aboard the good ship TARDIS for a trip to the island of Mauritius – let’s say sometime in the sixteenth century, before human discovery, back when the dodo was as alive as. . . as a dodo.’ He was at the controls now, twiddling dials – then suddenly he nipped back over to his chair, picked up the book and opened it again, extracting the dodo feather. He looked hard at his place, said, ‘Oh, I expect I’ll remember where I was. Can’t bear it when people turn over the page corners, just can’t bear it,’ shut the book again, and then was back at the console, inserting the feather into a little hole Martha could have sworn hadn’t been there before. The feather stuck out at a jaunty angle like it was on a Robin Hood hat, anomalous but still somehow completely at home among the alien technology.

  ‘That,’ said the Doctor, ‘will tune us in. Land us right at their big scaly feet. Sort of automatic dodo detector.’ He paused. ‘Automatic dodo detector. I ought to patent that, next time we go somewhere with a. . . what d’you call it? Place where you patent things.’

  ‘Patent office?’ Martha offered. ‘Good name, like it. You should trademark it. Next time we go somewhere with a. . . what d’you call it? Place where you trademark things.’

  ‘I don’t think there is an actual place –’ Martha began, but the Doctor wasn’t paying attention. ‘Here we go!’ he cried. With a final flick of a switch, the TARDIS sprang to life, as excited as its owner to get going once more. Martha fell back into the Doctor’s chair as the room began to vibrate. Good job she didn’t get seasick.

  The Doctor, as usual, seemed oblivious to his ship’s eccentricities. He picked up the book once again and swayed over to an inner door, calling, ‘Going to put this back in the library. Can’t bear books lying around all over the place, just can’t bear it.’ ‘But you haven’t finished it yet,’ Martha called after him. He didn’t seem to hear. She wondered how many books he’d never got to finish. She wondered how many books he’d read, full stop. Probably more than existed in the biggest library on Earth.

  By the time the Doctor returned, the TARDIS had settled down a bit, although the rising and falling of the column in the centre of the console showed that they were still in flight. The Doctor had swapped his thick paper-paged book for a slim plastic slab, a bit like a large iPod. He held it out to Martha.

  She took it, and looked at the screen. ‘The I-Spyder Book of Earth

  Creatures,’ she read. ‘What’s this, then?’ The Doctor grinned. ‘Lists every Earth animal there’s ever been.

  You get points for each one you spot. When you’ve got enough points, you send the book in to the Big Chief I-Spyder, and he sends you a certificate. Thought you could start with the dodo. Quite a lot of points for that one, cos it’s only found in such a tiny spot, both spatially and temporally.’

  It only took Martha a few seconds to get the hang of the little elec- tronic book. She accessed the index first, but rapidly decided that browsing wasn’t the best way forward – ‘It’s got about 18 billion en- tries under “A”!’

  ‘Wait till you get to “S”,’ said the Doctor, ‘sandpiper, spiny anteater, seventeen-year locust, Sea Devil. . . ’ – and just inputted the word ‘Dodo’. A page sprang to life before her eyes: The I-Spyder Book of Earth Creatures: Dodo, Raphus cucullatus.

  ‘You get eight hundred points for spotting a dodo,’ she noted. ‘How many do I need for a certificate?’ ‘Um. . . nine million, I think,’ he said. ‘Oh well. Gotta start somewhere.’ The TARDIS began shuddering again. ‘Here we are!’ the Doctor announced. ‘One tropical paradise, palm trees and non-extinct birds included in the price. Incidentally, here’s an interesting if disputed fact: the word “dodo” is a corruption of the Dutch “doedaars”, meaning fat, um, rear. So if a dodo asks you if its bum looks big, probably tactful to fib.’ The instant that the ship had ground to a halt, the Doctor’s hand was on the door lever. Martha loved that about him, the eagerness to explore, to tear off the wrapping of each new place like a child with its presents at Christmas.

  The doors opened. Framed in the doorway was a large browny- grey-y-white-y bird with a little tufty tail and a comically curved beak, far too big for its head. Actually, it was the thing’s size overall that surprised Martha the most – she’d been expecting maybe a turkey, and it was much bigger than that, perhaps a metre in height.

  But what shouldn’t have surprised her was that despite its unbeliev- ably sophisticated technology, despite the Doctor’s supposedly expert piloting and despite the automatic dodo detector, the TARDIS had got it wrong again. Oh, a dodo had been detected all right, there was the proof right in front of her. But what it wasn’t surrounded by was a tropical paradise complete with palm trees. Instead there was a sign:

  

Raphus cucullatus, Dodo. And there was a resigned dullness in the

creature’s eye.

  It was in a cage.

  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

DODO

  Rephus cuculletus Location: Mauritius

  The flightless dodo bird is the largest member of the pigeon family and is found only on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Its most notable feature is the large, curved beak that dominates its featherless face. It is browny-grey in colour, with curly grey tail feathers and yellow tips to its small wings.

  

Addendum:

Last reported sighting: AD 1681.

  Cause of extinction: hunting by man; introduction of non-indigenous species, e.g. pigs, leading to destruction of eggs and competition for food; destruction of habitat.

  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

  Creature Points

  Dodo 800

  Subtotal 800

  artha here again, hello. So, we’ve found a dodo – and it’s in a cage.

  Of course, that was the last thing I wanted. Well, not the very last,

M

  that would be to find ourselves back on the planet Belepheron, where the air smelled of bad eggs and boiled cabbage, and the natives’ idea of a friendly greeting was to smother you in green slime and cook you slowly over a fiery pit – look, you know what I mean. We’d just had that really awkward thing about zoos and cages, and I didn’t want to go there again, so discovering that the TARDIS had taken us to a bloomin’ bird behind bars was not a good thing.

  If you’d been there, seeing what I saw, you’d probably ask why I thought it was a captive, not a dead specimen. Why I thought it was alive. For a start, it actually wasn’t in a cage, you see, that was just the impression I got at first. It was in a sort of perspex box, the metal bars were part of a floor-to-ceiling grille that spanned the whole room. But the big thing was, it didn’t move. Not a millimetre. Not the tiniest flick of a feather. Frozen, it was. Stuffed, you’d probably think. And I don’t know why I didn’t think that, but I knew it was alive, just knew it. Maybe it’s something to do with my medical training – I’ve seen people slip from life to death with no outward sign at all, and I haven’t needed flatlining monitors to tell me what’s happened. It’s just something about them.

  When I could tear my eyes from the dodo, I looked around me and was pretty much staggered. There were these see-through boxes as far as the eye could see, and every box held an animal. I’m not going to start trying to list them, or even describe them. Some boxes as large as Buckingham Palace, some as small as a flea, each with a single creature inside it. That’s as far as I’ll go at the moment. Maybe more later. Almost certainly more later. But not now, because it’s too hard to get my head around it. Just accept that I was stunned. No, what did I say before – staggered. That suits it better.

  This sudden realisation, this comprehension of my surroundings, took only a second. I had this momentary thought of shutting the TARDIS doors before the Doctor could see, before he could get upset

• – but of course even that one second’s delay was far too much. I don’t doubt he’d taken it all in, probably taken in seven times as much as me in half the time. He was already walking forwards, a grim look on his face.

  Together, we stepped out of the TARDIS. And, what do you know? An alarm went off. That’s our life, that is. ‘Er, back inside the TARDIS is looking a good option right now,’ Martha said anxiously, as the siren wailed around them.

  ‘Oh come on, Martha, this is the good bit!’ replied the Doctor, not even looking back as he pulled the TARDIS doors closed behind him. She sighed. ‘Oh well, in for a penny. . . So your plan is, we stay here and be captured or interrogated or whatever by whoever set up that alarm system.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor agreed, nodding. ‘Especially now those guards have turned up.’ He nodded over to their left, indicating the men who were ap- proaching. They looked rather like the security guards from the hos- pital, with their navy-blue uniforms and peaked caps, but, to Martha’s deep discomfort, carried some form of chunky black space gun in their hands – something that the security guards back home had never done, although she thought some of them would have enjoyed it rather a lot.

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ one called. ‘Whatever you say,’ the Doctor called back cheerfully. ‘How about we put up our hands too? Would that be a help? Save you having to ask –’ ‘Shut up!’ yelled one of the guards.

  ‘Oh, right, yes, didn’t think of that one –’ ‘Shut up!’ The Doctor raised one hand, and used the other to put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh!’ he hissed to Martha, who decided it would probably be a good idea to hold up her hands too.

  The men led them out of the room. Martha found it hard to keep her attention on them during the long walk, surrounded as she was by all sorts of bizarre creatures. Her hands kept falling to her sides as she spotted a giant megatherium or a brilliantly plumaged parrot on the other side of the grille, and the Doctor had to keep nudging her to raise them again. He too was paying careful attention to their surroundings, cheerfully pointing out – verbally – a gorilla here and a velociraptor there. Cheerfully, yes – but Martha could see again that hardness in his eyes she’d glimpsed earlier.

  As they left the room, Martha turned to see a sign above the door that read, simply, ‘Earth’. A logo by its side showed the letters ‘MOTLO’ in a circle around the head of a strange beast, a line drawing showing tusks and triangular eyes. The emblem was repeated over and over along the corridor they were led down.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ the Doctor asked like a petulant child on a car trip. ‘Where’s “there”?’ Martha said. He shrugged. ‘Journey’s end. I do hate this low-level threatening stuff that goes nowhere – what good is it to anyone? Let’s get into the real stuff, that’s what I say.’ ‘Yes, I can’t wait for the real danger to kick in,’ she commented drily.

  ‘Good girl,’ said the Doctor, grinning at her as the guards came to a halt. ‘And it looks like we’re getting closer! Excellent!’

  Their escorts ushered them through a door, and they passed into a sort of foyer with signs pointing in all directions. Due to the presence of names such as ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’, she assumed the signs referred to planets, although other names were a mystery: Mondas, Refusis II (‘I’d like to see those exhibits,’ said the Doctor), Varos, Raxacoricofal- lapatorius, Tara. She briefly thought there was a planet called ‘Gift Shop’, until she realised that the sign was indicating, well, a gift shop. This had to be a museum, a gallery, something like that, although one wall displayed a map of continents and oceans, not the floor plan that one would expect in a museum lobby. There was no chance to inves- tigate, however, as the guards led them through a door marked ‘No Entry’ and they were marched down another corridor. At the end was a door bearing the tusked-beast logo, and they were ushered through it. Martha shivered as she passed inside, temporarily dizzy, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Once in the room the feeling passed.

  There were no grilles or perspex-boxed creatures here; it was a lu- dicrously mundane-looking office containing a desk and a chair. On the chair, behind the desk, was sat a woman – a ludicrously mundane- looking woman. Middle-aged, grey-haired, too much red lipstick look- ing like a clown’s mouth against her pale skin. V-necked red jumper with a white shirt underneath and a tweed blazer on top. The whole scene was just so normal that Martha felt like laughing – although the still-present guns made her decide it would be a bad idea on the whole.

  ‘Hello!’ said the Doctor, springing forward and lowering his arms so he could go for a handshake. ‘I’m the Doctor and this is Martha, and we’re your prisoners. Which I assume means we’ve done something wrong, but no idea what. Any clues? Martha? Anyone?’

  The woman didn’t take the Doctor’s hand – they never did, Martha had noted. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain,’ she said in a low, slightly croaky voice, ‘what you were doing in our Earth section out- side Northern hemisphere business hours?’

  The Doctor reached up and took Martha’s left wrist, dragging it down so he could see her watch. ‘Martha! Look at that! Your watch must be wrong. It’s outside Northern hemisphere business hours and we never realised.’ Martha forbore to point out that the time shown by her watch hadn’t borne any relation to the time of her surroundings for quite a while now. The Doctor knew that, anyway.

  ‘Well, sorry about that,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Glad we’ve got it all cleared up, perhaps your chums here could put away their weapons now?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Oh, I hardly think so. Now you’ve finally been caught in the act, we’re not likely to just let you go. We take theft and sabotage very seriously here at MOTLO.’

  The Doctor nodded sympathetically. ‘Of course you do. Good for MOTLO. MOTLO, MOTLO, MOTLO. Magic Otters Telephone Lending Office? Magnetic Ointment Treatment Light Orchestra?’

  ‘My Odd Theoretical Love Outlet?’ offered Martha, getting a be- mused and amused look from the Doctor. (‘I am a student,’ she re- minded him. ‘Medical students and bands, you know. . . ’)

  ‘The Museum of the Last Ones, as you can’t possibly fail to be aware,’ the woman told them. ‘But perhaps you are not aware that I am Eve, the curator of the museum, and that I have no sense of humour.’

  The Doctor looked around the office for another chair, but, seeing none, perched on the edge of Eve’s desk instead. She drew her chair back sharply.

  ‘I’m not after jokes,’ he said. ‘Actually, I haven’t found much funny since we arrived here. Perhaps you could explain why your museum contains living specimens. Perhaps you could explain exactly what your museum is, and what it does. I mean, I wasn’t planning on sabo- taging it, but I could always change my mind. You can help me make that decision. I realise you don’t have a sense of humour, but that shouldn’t stop you humouring me. What have you got to lose?’

  Only the Doctor could sound that threatening and that disarming at the same time. Eve began to speak. Probably, thought Martha, she wasn’t quite sure why she was doing so, why she was obeying the Doctor. After all, logic dictated that two people found in the middle of a building would have a fairly good idea of where they were without needing to be told.

  ‘This is the Museum of the Last Ones,’ Eve said again. ‘Home to the last remaining specimen of every otherwise-extinct life form in the universe.’

  The Doctor blinked. ‘But that’s trillions upon jillions upon, I don’t know, gazillions.’ ‘And thus the museum encompasses the entire planet.’ said Eve. Martha stared at her. ‘Not exactly a family day out, then.’ ‘More like a year out,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’d need to pack a fair few picnics. I might be inclined to be impressed, if I wasn’t fairly sure

  I’m not going to like anything I hear.’ ‘How could you possibly object?’ Eve asked. ‘This is the greatest conservation project the universe has ever known.’ The Doctor shuf- fled around on the desk. ‘I knew an old lady who made gooseberry conserve,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there was a lot in it for the gooseber- ries.’

  Eve ignored him. ‘We monitor every species, everywhere. When there is a single specimen left, our detectors pick this up. A collection agent is dispatched to retrieve the specimen, so it may be preserved for all time. Thus no species will ever be fully extinct while the mu- seum exists.’

  ‘You expect the last one to just hang around while you bimble down in your rocket ship or whatever?’ said Martha incredulously. The look Eve gave her was extremely pitying. She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pendant, a chunky metal square on which was a numberpad and a large blue button. ‘The collection agents use teleport technology,’ she explained. ‘They can arrive at the correct location almost instantaneously.’ She dangled the pendant tauntingly in front of her. ‘But don’t think you can use these to escape. Each one is keyed to a specific individual, and will carry that person only.’

  ‘As if we’d try to escape!’ said the Doctor indignantly. ‘Still, that’s not all you use the technology for, is it – I thought I detected a little tele- porty swish as we came through your door. That makes sense; being curator of this whole museum would require quite a bit of commut- ing otherwise. Still, you must work a long day, what with Northern hemisphere business hours, Southern hemisphere business hours, not to mention whatever time they open at the equator. . . ’ ‘I never sleep,’ Eve told him.

  ‘Quite right! It’s for tortoises, I always say – unless you’re the last tortoise of your kind, of course, in which case you get to be put in suspended animation for all eternity instead.’

  ‘It has to be done,’ said Eve. She reached behind her and slid back a wooden panel. Below was a bank of tiny lights the size of pinpricks, hundreds if not thousands of them, flashing in an endless sequence, one after the other. ‘Each flash of a light represents an alert,’ Eve told them. ‘A species has come to an end.’

  Martha opened her eyes wide in shock. ‘But there have been loads, just since you opened the panel!’ Eve nodded. ‘Indeed.’ ‘The last dodo,’ Martha whispered under her breath. ‘But, hang on, there was a gorilla there. Gorillas aren’t extinct.’ ‘Martha, Martha, Martha,’ said the Doctor. ‘Think.’ She thought, and of course it was obvious. ‘They’re extinct now,’ she said. ‘Whenever “now” is.’ He nodded sadly. ‘I spotted an aye-aye, a Siberian tiger, a chubby little kakapo – puts it a bit after your time, but not necessarily by much.’

  Eve was looking both puzzled and fascinated. Martha realised that they had been talking too freely of their bizarre way of life – did they really want this woman to know they were time travellers? – and hastened to dig them out of the hole. ‘I left Earth a while ago,’ she said. ‘Travelling. It’s very easy to lose track of time.’

  Eve nodded. ‘Oh, Earth,’ she said. ‘I noted you were found in the Earth section. One of our busiest, by far. It wasn’t so bad once – the occasional mass extinction every few million years; most planets have those. But in the last few thousand years it’s become quite a challenge to keep up with everything that’s being lost.’

  ‘Ooh, biting social commentary there,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not that you don’t have a point.’ He jumped off the desk. ‘Well, thank you for that – glad to have met you, nice to know what’s going on, but I think we’ll be getting along now. Come on, Martha.’ The guards raised their weapons again. ‘Or we could sit here quietly,’ continued the Doctor, sitting down again. ‘The Earth section,’ said Eve, ‘is also the site of the recent thefts. All have taken place outside visiting hours. No one has detected the culprit arriving in the museum.’ She paused. ‘You were in the Earth section. It is now outside visiting hours. Your arrival was not detected until you reached the section itself.’

  ‘I can see your reasoning, Sherlock – not a bad bit of deduction there,’ put in the Doctor. ‘Wrong conclusion, of course, but. . . ’ ‘And you appear to have a grudge against our practices. Under galactic law, I have more than enough justification to have you im- prisoned pending full investigation by the proper authorities.’ She reached out to her computer and pressed a few keys. ‘I see we can next expect a justice visit in five months, so until then. . . ’ Eve ges- tured at the guards. ‘Take them away.’

  ‘Hang on a minute!’ Martha couldn’t hide her shock. ‘You can’t just lock us up for months!’ Eve smiled. ‘Oh yes I can,’ she said, and turned away.

  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

MOUNTAIN GORILLA

  Gorilla beringei beringei Location: Rwanda, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo

  The shy mountain gorilla is a forest-dwelling herbivore. The male can weigh more than twice as much as the female. Its fur is black, although adult males develop silver fur on their backs, and are therefore known as ‘silverbacks’.

  The gorilla’s arms are longer than its legs. It walks either on two legs or on all fours, with its knuckles touching the ground.

  

Addendum:

Last reported sighting: AD 2030.

  Cause of extinction: poached for bush meat and endangered animal trades; destruction of habitat.

  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

  Creature Points

  Dodo 800 Megatherium 500 Paradise parrot 500 Velociraptor 250 Mountain gorilla 500 Aye-aye 900 Siberian tiger 600 Kakapo 900

  Subtotal 4950 guard grabbed hold of Martha’s arm, while another two pointed

A their space guns at her. Their fellows were treating the Doctor in

  the same way. She threw an anxious look at her companion – what were they going to do now? But just as Martha’s captor reached the office door, it flew open, hitting him on the nose. She took the opportunity to snatch away her arm – although in deference to the still-raised weapons, didn’t try to make a run for it. She looked instead at the new arrival.

  It was a young man – not much older than her – wearing forest- green overalls with the tusk-headed ‘MOTLO’ logo on the chest. He was short, slightly chubby, and sported a light-brown goatee beard and a worried expression.

  ‘Eve!’ he said, ignoring everyone else in his agitation, ‘there’s been another disappearance!’ The older woman closed her eyes for a second as if composing her- self, and then said, ‘What is missing this time, Tommy?’ ‘The Black Rhino,’ the man told her. Eve’s lips narrowed but she remained composed – Tommy looked like he was about to cry. ‘That makes five,’ Eve said, talking more to the air than the man. ‘Five irreplaceable specimens. Five creatures lost for eternity.’ She turned to the Doctor and Martha. ‘If you’re expecting any leniency, you can forget it right now. I will be pressing for the maximum penal- ties the law can offer.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Well, yes, you could do that,’ he said. ‘Or you could accept that we are innocent and let us help. You see, I happened to notice the Black Rhino as we were being escorted here. It was still there, and still very much alive if far from what I would call well.’

  ‘And you expect me to accept your word for that?’ ‘Oh, come on – the Black Rhinoceros is twelve feet long and weighs three thousand pounds.’ He flung open his suit jacket. ‘Search my pockets! Look up my sleeves! If I were wearing a hat you could check under that! And if you’re still not convinced, and if you ask nicely, you can even pat down the sides of my legs to check there’s not a rhinoceros sewn into the turn-ups of my trousers.’

  Eve opened her mouth to speak, but the Doctor started again, ges- turing at the guards. ‘What’s more, considering the absence of one rhino would leave one fairly big empty space, I think your bully boys here would have noticed if its cage was empty when we wandered past on our way out.’

  Nervously, the guard with the squashed nose spoke, one hand still massaging his face. ‘I saw the rhino,’ he said. The Doctor beamed at him. ‘Well observed, that generic guard!

  Case closed.’ Martha suddenly had an idea. ‘Besides,’ she said. ‘We’ve actually been sent here to help investigate these. . . disappearances, and we can prove it.’ She stared hard at the pocket where she knew the Doctor kept his psychic paper, hoping he’d get the hint.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ he agreed, giving her an appreciative smile and diving into his jacket pocket. ‘One set of proof, coming up.’ The Doctor handed over the psychic paper. Martha didn’t know how it would appear to Eve, but it would reflect whatever suited the situation best – some sort of identity card or official authorisation.

  Or so she thought. ‘Is this some kind of trick?’ asked Eve, turning the little wallet over in her hands. ‘It’s blank.’ Ah. She held it out in front of her. The Doctor, looking just slightly wor- ried, went to take it back, but Tommy intercepted it. He glanced down and then frowned. ‘Hang on! This says you’re undercover agents with the Galactic Wildlife Trust.’ He looked at Eve, confused.

  ‘That’s right!’ beamed a relieved Doctor. ‘Undercover, that’s us. In fact, we’re under so much cover that even our authorisation papers are shielded in secrecy sometimes.’ He snicked the psychic paper out of the man’s hand and shoved it back in his pocket before Eve could ask to have a second look. ‘So! Now all that’s settled, and after these gentlemen have put down their weapons, which I’m anticipating will happen in the very near future, let’s get on with some investigating. That’s what they pay us for, right, Agent Jones?’

  ‘Right. Yeah, of course.’ Eve didn’t seem precisely happy, but nodded. ‘Very well.’ ‘We could do with all the help we can get!’ said Tommy, smiling at

  Martha. She smiled back. When he wasn’t close to tears, he had a very jolly face.

  Martha tried to think about the sort of things an investigator would say under these circumstances. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t set up CCTV cameras,’ she tried, adding a bit of disdain to her voice to show the near-arrest hadn’t really worried her a bit. ‘You know, to keep an eye on things.’

  Eve looked at her pityingly. ‘We have almost 300 billion species in the Earth section,’ she replied. ‘Remotely monitoring each one is scarcely practical. We have to rely on movement sensors.’ Martha felt crushed. ‘Yeah, but, even so,’ she managed.

  The Doctor grinned at her. ‘Nice try,’ he mouthed. Reassured, she set back her shoulders and had another go. ‘Then maybe we should visit the scene of the crime,’ she said. ‘Er, again.

  Without anyone arresting us, I mean.’ ‘A very good idea, Agent Jones,’ said the Doctor. ‘Better start earning some of that enormous salary that our employers remunerate us with.’ ‘I’ll give you the guided tour,’ Tommy announced. ‘Earth’s my beat.’ ‘You’re a tour guide?’ Martha asked him.